The Calligrapher's Daughter (49 page)

Ilsun bowed deeply to the floor, tapping his forehead on the mat. “Thank you, Abbuh-nim. I’ll prove to you how hard I can work. I’m indebted to your wisdom and understanding.”

“Go.”

With his head down, Ilsun stood and backed out the door, bobbing. Han turned his eyes, but not before he was sickened by the giddy joy that he himself had caused to appear on his son’s flushed cheeks.

A WARM BREEZE SHOOK THE TENDER LEAVES OF THE ROSE-OF-SHARON bushes bordering the kitchen garden. I wrapped my skirt in a sand-colored apron and squatted, tilling with a bamboo hand-hoe. When the home inspectors began collecting metal goods, garden tools were among the first items to go. I was grateful for the childhood years spent outside with Byungjo, watching his able hands fashion tools from bamboo, sticks and hemp rope. Mother and I planted cabbage, cucumber and squash. The warm wind smelled green and soft, but the earth was still frozen in places where the winter clouds had lingered. I broke up those clumps as if beating them into submitting to spring.

From the porch, Dongsaeng called a cheerful goodbye and sauntered
off, a wrapped scroll strapped to his back. I waved and smiled at his exuberance. Everyone seemed pleased with him lately. Whatever had happened on that cold evening when Father shouted at Dongsaeng must have been the seed for this welcome change. He was home all the time now, studying, writing and painting. He visited Unsook regularly and showed her his scrolls. His work had grown extraordinary, infused with a rawness that gave energetic power to the strokes. Among those who could afford it—mostly Japanese art aficionados—his reputation as a talent of note was growing. If in the old days calligraphy had been regarded as a lesser art form, now any art created at all seemed a wonder.

“Aigu!” Mother sighed with satisfaction, poking seeds into the soil. “We’ll have squash blossom soup in six weeks’ time.”

I remembered early last autumn when Mother, Unsook and I searched the vines for young fruit, planning delectable salads of cucumber gimchi and squash pickled in chilies. Unsook had gathered squash blossoms and twirled them in her slender fingers. White moths fluttered in the light that bathed my sister-in-law, a basket of aromatic vegetable flowers on her arm. In her high clear voice, Unsook sang, “Butterfly, butterfly, come fly this way.” She laughed. “Hyung-nim, Sister-in-law, I forget the words! Sing with me.” We sang the children’s song together, Unsook’s breath vital and clear until the second verse brought coughs. She blamed the flower pollen, but I had noticed the stained handkerchief she’d pulled from her skirtband.

I tilled the cold earth and worried. Unsook, whom I called
Olgae
, Younger Sister-in-law, had grown increasingly weak ever since being quarantined in mid-November. She never complained, but I noticed circles beneath her eyes, and sallow cheeks. Lately her coughing had been typical, the fevers had abated and she seemed otherwise stable, but there was listlessness and malaise. Was it melancholy? Sometimes when I entered the sickroom, she appeared as if she’d been weeping. I didn’t want to ask what was wrong unless she showed her tears. The invalid had such little physical privacy that I wanted to respect her other privacy as much as possible.

When I returned the hoe to the outbuilding, a spray of striped yellow crocus caught my eye. I unearthed the sprouted bulbs whole and potted
them in a crock for Unsook. It might encourage her to see a token of the earth’s miracle of rebirth.

Wearing a facemask and carrying the crocus and a gourd of hot water for a sponge bath, I slid the door to the sickroom open. She was asleep. I set everything down quietly and straightened her blanket over her feet. A small choking noise made me turn. Unsook stared at the crocus, tears spilling. She coughed, then gasped for air, and I leaped to help her sit. Unsook’s shoulders heaved as her body worked to claim breath. Her fit subsided, leaving her wheezing and feverish. The sputum in the bowl I’d held to her mouth was yellow and gray. I felt awful. “I’m so sorry!” I folded pillows and blankets and propped her upright. “I thought the flowers would cheer you, but I’ve only brought misery! Say nothing— you’ll have another fit.” I rubbed her back until her shaking subsided.

“Beautiful— I didn’t mean—” she whispered.

“Quiet. Not a word. Stay sitting up. I’ll get fresh water.” I flew out the door and returned as quickly as it took to wash and fill the bowl with heated water. Gently, I massaged Unsook’s neck and shoulders and bathed her. I smoothed the bedding, changed her bedclothes and sat behind her, holding her in my arms like a child, humming, until she breathed evenly. “Can you say what’s wrong?”

Unsook’s next breath was a sob, which she controlled. She steadied her intake with effort, her breaths shallow. Newly combed into a long braid, her hair fell from her back to her lap. She twisted the braid into a bun, arms gaunt and tinged blue, and covered her eyes. “I think I must be going mad.”

Alarmed by her dead tone, I said, “Hush. Jesus is with us, you’ve got to trust him,” and was dismayed to hear how empty those words sounded.

“It’s nightmares or demons. No—the Devil himself! Or my imagination. Oh, Hyung-nim!” She fell against me and I held and rubbed her cold arms.

“Quiet now. We can pray. We can ask Mother.”

Unsook turned and grasped my hands. “No! Say nothing to Mother. It will kill her. Tonight—it will happen tonight! I know you shouldn’t— you’ll get sick—but won’t you, can you stay with me tonight, say that I’m not imagining it, I beg you—”

“Shh, let me feel your forehead.” Her irrationality made me worry if fever had done its damage. Unsook’s pupils were huge and black, imploring, and I said, “Of course I’ll stay. Don’t worry, nurses never get sick.”

“Tonight again. He was here today, so tonight— It was as if, as if—the demon!”

“No more talking. You’re getting excited over— Don’t fret, I’ll stay with you for as long as you want. Tonight, tomorrow, it doesn’t matter. We’ll pray. It’s nightmares or fever. Hush now.”

“You won’t say anything to Mother?”

“No.” Gently massaging, I simultaneously pressed her furrowed brow and the top of her spine to release tension. “But if I’m to spend the night I’ll have to tell her something.” I wondered fleetingly about hiring a shaman to exorcise the nightmares, but there was no money for a
mudang
and her entourage, and besides, who knew what such a woman would do to my poor patient? “We wanted to try the other steam treatment overnight. We can tell her that I must tend to it, and also that you’re feeling lonely and cooped up in the springtime.”

She slumped in gratitude and whispered, “I thought I would go mad.”

“No tears! You mustn’t cry! Think of the baby!” The forbidden word slipped out like an easy delivery, and I felt Unsook stiffen. Her unborn baby had been much on my mind. Surrounded by the obvious parallel of a profusion of greens sprouting from the inanimate earth, I couldn’t avoid harboring hope. We were told the fetus would not survive her illness, that her disease would become too advanced to expect a healthy outcome. As if a pact had been made, no one ever mentioned the doomed baby. But seven months had passed and my sister-in-law was still alive. Bedridden, sick, but very much alive. The child
moved
in her womb. If, every spring, God could bring such renewal of life, why couldn’t this baby have a chance to come to term? I hadn’t meant to put words to this. As a family, we had all resolved long ago that planning for the baby would be as hopeless an endeavor as the deadly progress of Unsook’s disease.

Unsook and I looked at each other and held hands, afraid that to say more would curse the faint hopes we both held for the baby. She wept, and I sang hymns to soothe her.

THAT NIGHT I tied a thickened face mask over my nose and mouth and stretched out next to Unsook’s pallet. The small room allowed me to spread only half a quilt. I kept my eyes wide open, determined to stay alert to watch and wake Unsook from the dreams that troubled her. We held hands in the dark and waited.
For what?
I wondered.

I must have dozed, for I was disoriented when I felt my hand tightly squeezed. Unsook was crushing my hand, and then her fingers went icily limp. I was only aware of this peripherally because the sickroom swelled with strange noises. It was startling more than frightening—night spirits could only mean her time was near—but I was being foolishly superstitious. I listened carefully and discerned whispering, and then a woman’s voice. Two spirits were talking. I could barely make out word sounds. Was it Korean? Japanese? Laughter. Moans! The ice from Unsook’s fingers clutched at my heart. I recognized my brother’s voice.

The unintelligible whispers became sighs, breaths, muffled groans, and I realized in horror and humiliation that I was listening to a couple fornicating. My brother with a woman in the room next to his own wife’s sickroom! I sat up, outraged, and toppled the crocus.

The sound of flesh against flesh stopped and the woman whispered, “There’s that noise again next door.”

Dongsaeng must have looked at the adjoining wall because I heard him say distinctly. “It’s nothing.”

Unsook’s fingers tugged at me. Too paralyzed with rage, I couldn’t respond.

“Someone is watching us!” hissed the woman.

“No, I told you before. There’s a sick aunt. Don’t worry—she’s deaf. Only be a little quiet. There are others in the house.”

“You mean quiet like this?” There were kissing, smacking noises and stifled laughter.

In a panic to do something, anything to stop what we were hearing, I tried to cover Unsook’s ears. I felt wet cheeks and pressure mounting in her neck and shoulders. She erupted in coughing.

“Who, who—?” the woman said in rhythm to their slapping bodies.

Unsook coughed mucus and saliva. Helplessly I held her head, supporting her while still trying to cover her ears.

“Shh!” Dongsaeng said, huffing as their tempo heightened and he grunted—

A terrible riff of coughs—

Then sudden quiet across the two rooms. Dongsaeng exhaled, “Ya-ah—shh,” and the woman sighed.

Unsook’s coughs deepened and were productive, each spasm releasing another clot of crumbling tissue from her heaving lungs.

ILSUN SAT NEAR THE OPEN WINDOW OF A RESTAURANT. THE DAY’S heat, thick with humidity, made him sweat as he sat waiting for the black market fellow. An occasional faint breeze did little to dissipate the stench from the street. The heat had cooked the gutter filth to emit even worse odors than usual. A wad of notes bulged in his pocket, and he wished he had worn loose hanbok instead of Western trousers. The street was quiet—too hot for work or even loitering outdoors—and he lazily regarded the occasional passerby for his go-between man. Perhaps it was too soon for such a purchase, but what was the point of waiting?

Najin was wrong. He had told her it was Father’s idea, but she still wanted to blame him for everything, including his wife’s illness. She
almost went as far as to blame him for Unsook’s death. He admitted there was a time when he ignored his wife, but he was good to her toward the end. He had provided for whatever medicine she needed and had sat with her frequently.

He remembered one spring day how she’d smiled when he showed her some of his calligraphy. “It’s work to be proud of,” she said quietly. She appeared increasingly drawn and pale as the days passed. When she looked at the scroll, he noticed she had trouble focusing.

“How are you feeling? You look tired,” he said.

“Me? I haven’t been sleeping— It’s nothing. Here, look.” She grasped his hand and placed it on her belly. Before he could draw away he felt movement beneath the skin.

“You mustn’t think everything will be okay. They said it probably wouldn’t live, and even if it did, it would be an idiot.” He gently disengaged his wrist and saw her skin was waxy, translucent. “I don’t mean to be cruel, but it’s not good for you to hope.”

She turned to the wall and he tied the scroll and stood to leave. “Yuhbo.” She sat halfway up. “I must ask something of you.” Her eyes were bright and Ilsun could guess what she wanted.

He moved a step backward. “It’s impossible. It’s not up to me.”

“But if the baby is born? Will you?”

“I can’t promise you something that isn’t going to happen. You’re only making yourself unhappy.”

“I ask nothing for me. Please? Just keep the child. Raise her. Educate her. Teach her about God.”

“Her?”

“I think so. Will you promise?” She closed her eyes and was as still as death.

He wanted to say it was pointless to swear to something that wasn’t in the realm of possibility, but she was his wife, and dying, and he promised her he’d do as she wished.

And he did. It’s true that a mother knows, because the baby was a girl. Small, early, but miraculously whole. He named her Sunok, pearl of Korea. Nuna said she’d raise the baby in the way Unsook would have wanted. Even Father seemed pleased to be Harabeoji, Grandfather, to this firstborn girl.

Meeja wasn’t happy about all the fuss he made over his baby girl, but she was complaining about everything these days: the gifts he gave her, the hours they were separated, the crowd of teahouse girls where she lived, and in particular, having to visit him in secret.

The waitress brought a cup of wine with a quickly melting sliver of ice in it. The black market fellow was late. Ilsun hoped the man had found what he wanted.

Najin was wrong. It had all worked out well, and what other people said really didn’t concern him. He repeated those words in his mind to mask the remorse that had taken shape inside him. He pressed his lips in a frown and justified his having tears as grief. Finally, Unsook was at rest, free of suffering. He felt proud of the funeral he’d given her, especially since times were so hard. Certainly she was in heaven. And by the grace of God, he had a wonderful baby—a girl, true, but a healthy child.

Najin, who months ago swore she’d never speak to him again, talked to him frequently about the child. He was selling his art at good prices, and Father was satisfied with his work. He put enough food on the table and had extra on hand. Mother had praised his generosity with Unsook’s funeral and had complimented his responsible handling of the family.